This way, this way.
Whoa, what’s going on?
God, it’s late.
The Fender Custom Shop is a sort of nirvana for guitar geeks.
Anything from just the really well-made team-built Fender,
to your ultimate fantasy.
There’s a family tie that,
it didn’t get much closer to art than a Fender Custom Shop guitar.
We were all in on it.
The Custom Shop was a ball of creative energy
that I have yet to experience again in my life.
I saw myself as the savior of the Fender history.
It was Bill Schultz’s idea to start a custom shop,
and what he wanted to do was to get back to the old Fender.
Bill wanted that and what he said to me is,
“I don’t care if we just breakeven.
I want the coolest custom shop and the best product available.”
And I said, “I’ll do that.”
Fender Custom Shop started in 1987.
I was officially hired in ’86, while I was still in Texas.
In this big old tweed case is the very first order
ever taken for the Fender Custom Shop.
And I came with that order in my pocket from Texas.
I’ve got a few firsts' with it.
The one thing is the first double neck ever to come out of Fender.
When I got to Fender,
they said, “We want you to get an assistant.”
And when I looked at the credentials,
I hired Page because he had been there working at R&D for ten years.
I knew I needed his background.
I absolutely believe that the Custom Shop
was the beginning of bringing the soul back to Fender.
It was a big component in healing the scars
that were created from CBS ownership.
When Bill Shultz put the investors together to buy the company back,
Bill Shultz said,
“Okay, maybe this idea of these couple guys in the back 40
building these customs guitars would be cool.”
You know, bring it back to that glory kind of thing
when Leo Fender first started the company.
Where artists were like thrilled by it.
It was new and it was different.
He was brining stuff up to their caliber.
We all love guitars, we love Fenders
and next you thing you know, "we" is Fender.
And that was a great realization at some point,
that we were it.
The word had been out that we had opened a custom shop.
Well, at the end of three months, we had 300 or 600 orders.
We suddenly realized that two guys cannot do that.
We went in there and picked guys who had talent.
There was a team.
It was a rag-tag group of brilliant builders.
J.W. Black.
Pinpoint, accurate.
George Blanda.
Scientist and great builder.
- Mark Kendrick. - Breathes Fender.
Fred Stuart.
Eccentric artesian.
- Alan Hamel. - Hillbilly brilliant.
Gene Baker.
Creator of dreams.
- Michael Stevens. - In constant pursuit of perfection.
- John Page. - Great leader, great visionary.
That was the magic of the shop, that team.
Especially the early days, Custom Shop was like animal house.
You really want me to tell you that, huh?
Wouldn’t fly in it in those days either.
A lot of hilarity, lots of bathroom humor.
We worked all kinds of whacky hours.
You worked seven days a week, sometimes you slept there.
The early history of the Custom Shop was very tumultuous.
And when I say tumultuous,
not knowing if you’re going to have a job in a week,
right, is pretty scary.
You get pretty crazy when you’re under that kind of stress.
And you need to relieve it somehow or another.
So, yeah, there were plenty of pranks.
If they weren’t picking on you, they didn’t love you.
So, if they were picking on you, you knew you were doing the right thing.
We were brutal to each other
but it was like your best friends, you know?
It wasn't like unbridled buffoonery.
It was an unshackled creative period
and we all contributed.
I can remember, as things expanded,
we were kind of blowing our own minds.
We were just trying to make the best guitars we could,
and just rocking along.
It was just create, create, create.
Never stop creating.
We were about making absolutely the best guitar we were capable of.
And pushing it artistically.
And that kind of caught on like wildfire.
All of a sudden,
we’re at the Custom Shop and they were like,
“Hey, these guys are building this incredible stuff and you can buy it.”
It mushroomed and the amount of exposure was just huge.
Between ’89 and ’93, everything just started ramping up.
All of sudden, there’s an Eric Clapton guitar on the line.
Get to build guitars for Sting, and Merle Haggard,
and Johnny Cash.
Richie Sambora, the whole Bon Jovi crew,
the Stones, Dylan.
- Elliot Easton. - Dick Dale.
- Stu Hamm. - Jimmy Paige.
Jeff Beck. Clapton.
So, artists were always pushing you.
They wanted new ideas, they wanted new things.
Getting to work with these people on a professional level,
but supplying them the instrument, that’s a got cool factor about it
that is hard to understand until you’ve done it.
When you build guitar,
you never know what it’s path to life was going to be
but it’s a little nibble at a kind of immortality.
To have been invited to partake
in the 30th anniversary of the Custom Shop is,
without question, a really great honor.
Even though we’ve moved on, we have our own companies,
and we’re doing these other things, you know,
it says a lot for Fender
and I’m very honored to be a part of it.
All right. Here’s the guitar that we’re all here for.
This is the one I chose to have.
A Fender crew build and it is a Fender Esquire.
It looks like an Esquire, except there are some nuances.
You’ve got the plate engraved with the founders’ logo,
the left hand is where it is on a right-handed guitar.
What I hear is that it tightens this note up,
the bass note, and it fatten ups the high string.
Well, as you can see, in my design for the 30th anniversary
of the Fender Custom Shop is inspired by the first guitar and that was 001,
this double neck from the Fender Custom Shop in 1987.
This is my 30th anniversary Custom Shop founders’ design guitar.
It’s a double F-hole Esquire.
I first designed this guitar back in like 1990,
dubbed it the Page-o-caster.
I put a koa top in celebration of my friend and mentor,
Freddie Tavares.
Also, it includes my JP Woodtone saddles that I make here in Oregon.
I picked the Jazzmaster because I thought it was kind of a misunderstood guitar
and it didn’t quite get its due.
One of the key features is this stabilized and dyed wood here.
This is the guitar.
It’s a Telecaster with early 20th century acoustic guitar motif.
It’s got a Guatemalan rosewood back.
Bear claw spruce, Tortoiseshell pickguard.
I was very honored that I’ve been involved in this.
So, these were the type of guitars I was building
early on in Custom Shop that weren’t the norm at the time.
I wanted to stay with the same concept that was going on back then.
This really is a celebration of how Fender
went from just being an import company in ’85,
to being back as one of the world leaders in guitar building.
I was inspired by some southern California,
orange county,
low-rider car culture that was around my neighborhood at the time.
The tealer sunburst is a tip of the hat
to things traditionally Fender.
We’ve got a silver sparkle Tele, with a black burst.
The reason that I chose to do a sparkle was,
that’s how I got my start in the Custom Shop.
This, I call the Stelecaster.
If you check it out,
it’s completely half Strat, half Tele.
The Tele sits better under your lap because of the sharper radiuses and all,
but a Strat has always been more comfortable with the arm contours.
So, I just kind of felt it was the best of both worlds.